How the Judge Picks the Number: Child Support and Maintenance Above the Statutory Cap in Westchester

There is a rumor that runs through every divorce in this county. It goes like this: Westchester is one of the richest counties in America, and its judges award maintenance and child support in record-breaking numbers. The statewide income caps are for other counties, places where a house costs what a house is supposed to cost. Here, judges hand down giant numbers that crush the payor and set the recipient up for a life of leisure.

People settle because of the rumor. People refuse to settle because of it. Lawyers repeat it in negotiations as though it were a rule of law: Westchester always goes above the cap.

So I went looking for every reported Westchester support decision from the past three years to see whether the rumor holds up.

Like most rumors, it doesn’t.

I tracked down every Westchester Supreme Court support decision published from 2023 through 2025: every trial award, in the official reports and the slip opinions, where a judge set child support or maintenance and you can actually read how the cap was handled. There are sixteen. They come from four justices: Hyer, Patel, Fiore, and Ondrovic. Then I pulled every Appellate Division, Second Department decision reviewing a Westchester support judgment over the same stretch, and read those too.

It was slow work. Slip opinions, reporter volumes, worksheets, the arithmetic inside the opinions redone by hand. But it is the only way to learn what actually happens in these courtrooms, as opposed to what people say happens. Every decision discussed below is linked at the end of this article, so you can read what I read.

Here is what sixteen trial awards and a stack of appellate decisions say about the rumor. It is not just wrong. It is wrong in both directions at once. And what the judges are actually doing is more disciplined, and more useful to you, than anything the rumor imagines.

Two million dollars of income, and a guideline award

In 2023, the husband in a Westchester divorce earned $1,908,851. The children were grown, so child support was off the table. The only number left was maintenance, and the question went first to a referee. The referee looked at nearly two million dollars of income, ran the maintenance calculation up to $500,000, and recommended $11,942.06 a month for six years. The trial judge threw the recommendation out.

Justice Hyer, one of the matrimonial judges in Westchester, declined to deviate from the guideline, applied “the statutory cap of $228,000.00,” and awarded $4,700 a month for seventy-two months. (G.B. v. J.M.B., 253 N.Y.S.3d 917 (N.Y. Sup. Ct. 2026)) Not $11,942.06. $4,700. From a payor pushing two million dollars a year, in the county where everyone thinks the caps don’t matter.

To follow the explanation, you need about ninety seconds of arithmetic.

Child support in New York starts as a formula, not a judgment call. It runs on Domestic Relations Law § 240(1-b) and its Family Court Act twin. (N.Y. Dom. Rel. Law § 240; N.Y. Fam. Ct. Act § 413) The court adds both parents’ incomes, subtracts the statutory deductions, and applies a fixed percentage keyed to the number of children: seventeen percent for one, twenty-five for two, twenty-nine for three. Each parent owes a pro rata share based on his or her fraction of the combined income.

When the Legislature enacted the Child Support Standards Act in 1989, the goal was a predictable, uniform baseline for middle-income families, with a brake on confiscatory awards in high-income households. In the late 1980s, $80,000 a year captured the vast majority of New York households, and the Legislature deliberately set the threshold comfortably above the state’s median family income. Then the number sat there. For more than two decades, $80,000 stayed $80,000 while inflation did its work. In 2010, the Legislature raised the baseline to $130,000 and, to spare the figure from future gridlock, tied it to automatic adjustments under Social Services Law § 111-i every two years. Everybody calls that ceiling the CSSA cap.

From March 1, 2022 through February 29, 2024, the child support cap was $163,000 and the maintenance cap was $203,000. From March 1, 2024 through February 28, 2026, the pair rose to $183,000 and $228,000. Since March 1, 2026, the figures are $193,000 and $241,000.

Below the cap, child support is a calculator. Two incomes go in, a number comes out, and there is very little for a judge to decide.

Above the cap, the statute lets the court apply the child support and maintenance formulas to as much of the excess income as it sees fit, in its discretion. That one word has confounded lawyers and generated millions of dollars in litigation.

Where combined parental income, or the payor’s income, runs past the cap, the court has to decide what more, if anything, the family warrants, and it has to say why. (N.Y. Dom. Rel. Law § 240) Section 240(1-b)(c)(3) gives the judge three roads: weigh the ten factors the statute lists, apply the same percentage to some or all of the excess, or do both. The Court of Appeals set that framework in Cassano v. Cassano thirty years ago, and it has barely moved since. Cassano grants discretion. It does not grant amnesia. The one thing it insists on is articulation: the court has to give a record reason for whatever it chose.

Maintenance mirrors the design. Post-divorce maintenance runs on Domestic Relations Law § 236(B)(6), the interim version on § 236(B)(5-a), and both pair a guideline formula with a cap on the payor’s income. Where the payor earns more than the cap, the court computes the guideline on capped income first, and only then asks whether the statutory factors justify more. Once that sequence is followed, amount and duration sit in the trial court’s sound discretion, with one fixed star: the predivorce standard of living is a mandatory consideration.

The judges stay at the cap, and not just for modest earners

So once a family’s income clears the cap, a judge has exactly three possible answers. Stay at the cap and award the guideline figure. Pick a higher ceiling, run the percentage to that number, and stop. Or treat the entire combined income as the base, which is what the rumor says Westchester judges do.

The first thing the record shows is the thing nobody believes: Westchester judges stay at the cap, and not just for modest earners. They stay at the cap at the top of the income scale.

In M.M. v. R.M., combined CSSA income was $663,121.73 and there were three children. (M.M. v. R.M., 210 N.Y.S.3d 719 (N.Y. Sup. Ct. 2024)) Justice Patel recited the cap then in force, $163,000, rising to $183,000 after March 1, 2024, went through the paragraph (f) factors including the children’s standard of living, and declined to go above it. Basic child support came out at $2,599.85 a month through February 29, 2024, and $2,918.85 a month after. The court found it “just and appropriate to cap the parties’ income for child support purposes at the statutory amount.”

Read that again. Combined income more than four times the cap. A cap-only award. The standard of living was weighed; it simply did not command a multiple of the formula.

Justice Ondrovic reached the same place in S.A. v. M.A., where combined parental income was $419,216. (S.A. v. M.A., 213 N.Y.S.3d 672 (N.Y. Sup. Ct. 2023)) Somebody put a $300,000 working cap in front of the court. The court rejected it and found the pro rata share up to the $163,000 statutory cap just and appropriate. Child support was $3,205.30 a month, with maintenance of $2,012.31 a month for four years. Combined income two and a half times the cap, and the court did not move off the statute.

The same justice held the same line in D.A. v. C.A., where combined income of $194,076.24 sat modestly above the then $163,000 cap; after weighing the paragraph (f) factors, the court found an above-cap award unwarranted. And in A.F. v. T.F., combined income landed below the cap, so the award is simply the worksheet: child support of $1,192.85 a month, maintenance of zero. (212 N.Y.S.3d 894 (N.Y. Sup. Ct. 2024))

Add the man from the opening, held to the guideline at $1,908,851, and you have a run of decisions the rumor cannot survive. If Westchester judges treated the cap as decoration, every one of these opinions would need explaining away. None of them does. Each is the statute doing exactly what it says: recite the cap, weigh the factors, conclude the guideline is enough.

The second ceiling

But I read the other cases too, the ones that produce the big monthly numbers, the ones the rumor feeds on. Inside every one of them I found the same quiet move, a move nobody talks about.

In A.S. v. M.S., combined parental income was $470,487.89. (A.S. v. M.S., 193 N.Y.S.3d 923 (N.Y. Sup. Ct. 2023)) Justice Patel recited the $163,000 CSSA cap and then used combined income up to $250,000. Child support was $4,676.53 a month. Maintenance was $1,558.09 a month for two years and three months, calculated on the $203,000 maintenance cap. The court went above the CSSA ceiling. It did not run the percentage on $470,000. It chose a different ceiling and stopped.

N.F. v. O.F. is the fuller version of the same move. (N.F. v. O.F., 208 N.Y.S.3d 921 (N.Y. Sup. Ct. 2024)) Combined adjusted parental income was $953,849.86, there were three children, and the record documented the marital standard of living. The court applied twenty-nine percent through $350,000. Not through $953,849.86. The noncustodial parent’s child support came to $3,232.62 a month; at-cap support would have produced $1,690.20 as that parent’s share, so the excess up to $350,000 added $1,542.42. The court cited the Appellate Division’s decisions in Bari, Sinnott, and Levin v. Blum, and it wrote out the paragraph (f) factors. (Bari v. Bari, 200 A.D.3d 835 (2021); Sinnott v. Sinnott, 194 A.D.3d 868 (2021); Levin v. Blum, 167 A.D.3d 609 (2018))

Now line up three of these decisions, because they share a judge. M.M., A.S., and N.F. are one justice, one county, one statute, a window of about a year. Combined incomes of $663,122, $470,488, and $953,850 produced, in order, a stay at the statutory cap, a ceiling of $250,000, and a ceiling of $350,000.

One judge. Three answers. A county running on autopilot does not produce that spread. A judge reading three different records does.

Justice Hyer’s above-cap decisions are built the same way. In J.D.D. v. A.D., the court named the $163,000 CSSA cap, computed $3,395.83 a month for two unemancipated children, and found that figure “insufficient based on the parties’ lifestyle and standard of living.” (J.D.D. v. A.D., 203 N.Y.S.3d 864 (N.Y. Sup. Ct. 2024)) It then applied twenty-five percent to $331,892.60 of combined income, producing a payor’s share of $4,978.40 a month, and set maintenance at $3,800 a month for twelve years on a $350,000 combined-income construct, above the $203,000 statutory maintenance cap. A true above-cap award on both sides of the ledger. Also a written one. The court did not touch the payor’s full W-2. It chose a ceiling, explained why the statutory one did not fit this household, and stopped.

Then there is D.P. v. S.P., the case people cite when they want to prove Westchester has left the cap behind. It proves the opposite, and the proof is in the arithmetic. (D.P. v. S.P., 248 N.Y.S.3d 851 (N.Y. Sup. Ct. 2026)) The payor was imputed $1,679,260. Combined CSSA income was roughly $1.63 million. Child support during maintenance came to $9,687.50 a month, and $9,687.50 a month is exactly the kind of number the rumor lives on.

Now do what the rumor never does and look at where the number comes from. It is twenty-five percent of a $500,000 combined ceiling, not twenty-five percent of $1.63 million. The maintenance guideline of $3,280.53 a month was raised to $8,000 a month for 34.5 months. The court faced a household with an extraordinary paper income, decided the statutory cap was a poor fit, and still imposed a lid. Had it done what the rumor describes, the child support number would have been roughly three times larger.

The move holds at the modest end of the scale too. In C.N. v. R.N., combined CSSA income was $231,914.37, just above the then-$183,000 cap; the court exercised discretion up to $230,000, producing child support of $2,311.17 a month, an increment above the cap of $472.28 a month. In Ab.P. v. An.P., the court recited the $163,000 cap and applied the entire combined parental income of $192,553.46, an over-cap portion of $29,553.46. (Ab.P. v. An.P., 196 N.Y.S.3d 918 (N.Y. Sup. Ct. 2023)) And in M.J. v. F.M., Justice Fiore took combined income of $759,285, set a discretionary ceiling of $450,000, citing Bari, Sinnott, and Levin v. Blum, and awarded child support of $5,906 a month. Above the published cap, below combined income, on a written paragraph (f) record. Same architecture, different judge.

Lay the sixteen decisions side by side and the discretionary ceilings form a list: $230,000, $250,000, $331,893, $350,000, $400,000, $450,000, $500,000.

You will not find any of those numbers in a statute. Each one was built by a judge, for one family, on one record. And each one did two jobs at once. It let the award rise past a statewide figure that had nothing to do with this household. And it stopped the award well short of what the family actually earned.

Call it the second ceiling. When a Westchester justice goes above the published cap, the court does not treat combined parental income as the new base. It picks a figure and runs the percentage there. Measured against the published cap, the second ceiling looks expansive. Measured against actual combined income, it is a restriction. One boundary is swapped for another, and the substitute is always the lower of the two stories you could tell about the case.

And the second ceiling is not plucked from the air. It is the statutory second step, done with the household in view. Paragraph (f) points the court at the financial resources of the parents and the child; the child’s physical and emotional health and any special needs; the standard of living the child would have enjoyed had the marriage continued; the tax consequences; the non-monetary contributions of the parents; the parents’ educational needs; the disparity in parental incomes; the needs of other children; and any other relevant factor. (N.Y. Dom. Rel. Law § 240) Strip away the statutory language and that list is an instruction to find out what it costs to run this particular family. Shelter. Health insurance. Unreimbursed medical. Work-related child care. The educational costs the family actually paid. The number that comes out can be large, because Westchester households are expensive. A large number built out of the statutory factors is not a disregarded cap. Confusing the two is the mistake the rumor is made of.

Two caps, one judgment

One decision shows the machinery from both sides at once. In Ab.P., the two caps ran on separate tracks inside a single judgment. On the child support side, Justice Hyer exceeded the $163,000 CSSA cap and ran the twenty-nine-percent three-child figure across the whole of the $192,553.46 combined parental income, the $29,553.46 above the cap included, resting that step expressly on the paragraph (f) factors, in particular the custodial parent’s limited resources and the high standard of living the children had known in a high-cost county. (Ab.P. v. An.P., 196 N.Y.S.3d 918 (N.Y. Sup. Ct. 2023)) The basic obligation came out at $2,885.09 a month. Maintenance went the other way. The payor’s income of $129,681.56 fell below the $203,000 maintenance cap, so the guideline ran on full income and produced $851.53 a month. What lifted that award was not the cap. It was the duration. Having found that the payee had suffered domestic violence that diminished her earning capacity, the court set the term at the top of the statutory range, three years and nine months, to let her approximate the marital standard of living. Even the award that reads as enhanced was not an income-ceiling story at all. The enhancement lived in the duration.

What the Appellate Division is actually policing

If the second ceiling were lawless, the Appellate Division would be striking these awards down. It is doing something more interesting. It is grading the writing.

The Second Department has upheld working caps of $350,000 and $400,000 where the trial court actually engaged the paragraph (f) factors, with the children’s needs and the marital standard of living leading the list. (Torkin v. Susac, 236 A.D.3d 1082, 230 N.Y.S.3d 647 (2025); Bari v. Bari, 200 A.D.3d 835, 161 N.Y.S.3d 97 (2021); Sinnott v. Sinnott, 194 A.D.3d 868, 149 N.Y.S.3d 441 (2021); Levin v. Blum, 167 A.D.3d 609, 89 N.Y.S.3d 239 (2018)) And it has sent cases back where the trial court “failed to sufficiently articulate its reasons for deviating from the statutory formula.” (Yamauchi v. Yamauchi, 250 A.D.3d 1126 (N.Y. App. Div. 2026)) The question on appeal is never whether the dollar is large. It is whether the judge showed the work.

Watch the rule operate. In Torkin v. Susac, the trial court applied the CSSA percentage to combined parental income of $400,000, and the Appellate Division called that a provident exercise of paragraph (f) discretion in light of the parties’ and children’s resources, the children’s health and special needs, and an affluent marital lifestyle. (Torkin v. Susac, 236 A.D.3d 1082 (2025)) The marital estate included a Sullivan & Cromwell partnership interest, and lifestyle runs all through the opinion. But watch what lifestyle does there. It moved the ceiling from the published cap to $400,000. It did not erase the ceiling. Maintenance of $10,000 a month, then $23,000 a month through July 31, 2027, was likewise affirmed as a provident exercise of § 236(B)(6) discretion.

Varnit v. Varnit makes the point from another direction. (Varnit v. Varnit, 233 A.D.3d 917 (2024)) The Court held that the trial court had “engaged in a thorough analysis” of the parties’ finances, the income disparity, and the child’s pre-dissolution standard of living, and had providently based child support on parental income above the statutory cap. The monthly figures were $1,852, then $2,093, plus maintenance of $1,416 for eighteen months. The appeal modified parental access. It did not touch the dollars.

Where the writing is missing, the number does not survive. Yamauchi remitted both child support and maintenance because the trial court failed to articulate its reasons for departing from the formula, and because the maintenance amount and duration were excessive under § 236(B)(6)(e)(1) and (f)(2). (Yamauchi v. Yamauchi, 250 A.D.3d 1126 (N.Y. App. Div. 2026)) Fleurantin v. Fleurantin affirmed imputation of $250,000 and a maintenance award of $2,440.59 a month for fifty-five months, and still vacated child support of $4,323.41 a month for one narrow reason: FICA and the maintenance the court had just ordered were never deducted from CSSA income, as the statute requires. (Fleurantin v. Fleurantin, 244 A.D.3d 817 (2025)) And Finley v. Turner deleted income findings of $455,855 and $102,212 and remitted, which necessarily vacated child support of $5,979 a month and maintenance of $1,680 a month. (Finley v. Turner, 249 A.D.3d 1010 (2026)) The defect there was the income determination, not a theory that the cap must always hold.

So the appellate decisions point one way. Discretion above the cap is available, and when it is explained it will be affirmed, including at $400,000. Discretion that is not explained, or a worksheet that skips a statutory deduction, will not be. This is not a Department nudging trial courts to be generous. It is a Department insisting that the statute get used.

Which brings us to you

Which brings us to you, on one side of this or the other.

If you are the one who will write the check, stop assuming that combined income several times the cap will still get you a cap-only award.

If you are the one who will receive it, stop assuming the court will run the percentage across the whole combined income because the marital residence happens to sit in Westchester.

What you are entitled to, on either side, is a judge who will try to find the number that runs this household. The evidence that decides that number is not a theory about what Westchester always does. It is the budget, the children’s actual costs, and a record clean enough for the statutory factors to be written on. If there is going to be a second ceiling in your case, it will be built out of whatever you put in front of the court. Build the record. It is the only part of this you control.

One caveat, stated plainly, because the difference between research and rumor is that research tells you its limits.

Everything here rests on the decisions that were published: the opinions where the cap analysis can actually be read. Sixteen trial awards from four justices is every one I could find for this window, but it is not a census of the unpublished NYSCEF docket, and an Appellate Division memorandum that affirms a monthly figure without restating the worksheet proves nothing about whether the trial court stayed at the cap or left it. Any claim about a countywide rate of above-cap awards, offered as a percentage, would be a guess dressed up as data, and I am not going to offer one. What can responsibly be said, on the opinions that can be read, is this: Westchester justices in this period used the statute, including when they went above it, and the Second Department reversed them when they did not.

What’s more, I can tell you from experience that folks settle way above these capped figures all the time.

Gus Dimopoulos, Esq., managing partner of Dimopoulos Law Firm, P.C., is widely recognized as a go-to attorney for the most complicated divorce cases.

Every decision, linked

Every decision discussed above is publicly available at no cost. Appellate decisions link to the New York Official Reports; the Court of Appeals decisions from the 1990s and 2004 predate the slip-opinion service and link to a free full-text source; the Westchester trial decisions are unbound slip opinions and link to whichever free source carries the full text.